Jakarta. Indonesia’s government has uncovered the allocation and sale of parcels of sea space before reclamation and required permits were completed, with the practice most prevalent in Batam, according to the Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning Ministry.

Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning Minister Nusron Wahid said Monday that parcels of coastal waters had been allocated, divided up and even offered for sale or partnership arrangements before the underlying land existed legally.

“We found that a lot of sea areas have already been divided into parcels, and some have even been sold or assigned for cooperation,” Nusron told reporters in Jakarta. “This is most prevalent in Batam, although it is also happening in other areas.”

The government plans to issue a directive clarifying that sea areas cannot be allocated as land before the required reclamation process has taken place, Nusron said.

The issue is particularly relevant to Batam, a major industrial and investment hub near Singapore where land and coastal development are managed in large part by the Batam Indonesia Free Zone Authority, or BP Batam.

Under the government’s rules, reclamation and subsequent land rights are supposed to proceed through a series of stages. These include designation of a reclamation site, approval for marine spatial-use activities, environmental approval, a reclamation permit, implementation and monitoring, verification of the completed reclamation and the issuance of management rights, or HPL.

Only after those steps can the government designate the resulting land and grant land rights, Nusron said.

In some cases, however, land allocations were issued before the reclamation site had even been formally designated or marine spatial-use and environmental approvals obtained.

“Before there is a reclamation site designation, before the marine spatial-use approval, before environmental approval and so on, there has already been a land allocation,” Nusron said. “That means eight stages of the process have been skipped.”

The government is asking authorities with the power to allocate land, particularly BP Batam and other regional land managers, to review existing policies and ensure that coastal allocations comply with regulations.

BP Batam's jurisdiction covers about 73,239 hectares of land, waters, protected forests and mangrove areas, with about 42,227 hectares potentially eligible for management rights.

Nusron said the government considers the sea and coastal areas to be public spaces that cannot be converted to private use without the necessary permits.

“If the sea and coast have been parceled out without marine spatial-use or reclamation permits, that means public space is being used for private interests, and that is not permitted,” he said.

He compared the practice to the controversy over coastal fencing that has emerged in Indonesia in recent years. The difference, he said, is that in the cases now under review, the areas have not yet received land certificates but have already been promised or allocated to particular parties.

Nusron did not provide details on the total area involved and said the figure should be obtained from BP Batam, which has authority over land allocations in the city.